remains conscious as it slowly drowns in its own blood - a process that can take up to six minutes.

Well, no - not unless you trust a flaming leftie like Johann Hari, writing in the Independent.

Dr. Temple Grandin - THE major force for improved, humane cattle handling in our day - reports most cows lose consciousness within 30 seconds of kosher slaughter, and all are out and down by just over a minute.

The special long knife used in kosher slaughter is important. When the knife is used correctly on adult cattle, there was little or no behavioral reaction (Grandin, 1992, 1994)....

All of this research needs to be looked at in the perspective of the entire process. Abusive handling practices prior to slaughter and highly stressful methods of restraint may cause more suffering than the actual slaughter itself. The author has been in dreadful places where large, 600 kg cattle were hung up by one leg and they were all thrashing and bellowing.

Link to REAL data - an entire section of her website devoted to ritual slaughter:

http://www.grandin.com/ritual/rec.ritual.slaughter.html

More grand-guignol fantasy:
To give just one example: after you cut a calf's throat, in 62 per cent of cases, large clots form at the back of its carotid arteries

Citation please. Blood flow in the carotid arteries is so swift - and the arteries so large - that this is unlikely.

Here's another religious excuse for barbarity for you:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MxNKOqaTAkM

Does it matter? You are killing and eating an animal. Much like legal execution and abortion, there's no way to make it "nice", and the only reason to try is to make yourself feel better.

There you are Ben, you ran away from our last conversation where you claimed to be a member of a sect of Judaism which was created when mortals corrected your inffalinle creator.

So, I'll ask again - what was the rational behind fallible, corruptable, mortals being required to correct the mistakes of a perfect, infallible, all knowing creator?

Look...I'm not big on animal cruelty, certainly not for the fun of it, but with so many serious problems facing actual human beings, I just don't see the issue as all that important either. No matter what manner an animal is slaughtered in for the purposes of providing food, that is nowhere near as important as addressing the problem with so many PEOPLE not having food at all.

Follow me? Sure we should prosecute outright abuse, dog fighting ring organizers, kitten stompers, etc. when we get the opportunity to, but going after a practice that doesn't harm people, is a misplacement of priorities as long as there are more serious ones that do.

Robert, humans amaze me as they think they are "better" than all other living things on this earth. I love a good steak, but have to force myself to forget it's origin. If we are going to kill other life forms to sustain ourselves, let's at least make it as pure as possible. Ben David, all offense intended, your religion clearly blurs your logic, and that is the inherent problem with religion, and btw, I am not an atheist, I just chose to let my brain rule my logic thought and my aspirations rule my soul.

So an animal has a minute or two of pain. Blah, blah. Cutting an animal's throat and letting it bleed out is a fairly easy death. It's better than being dragged down by a pack of lions who begin eating while the animal is still alive. Yet that's the way the world has been designed to work. Quit daydreaming, petunias. If you're not willing to kill and slaughter the animal yourself then you've got no business eating one. (Vegans, however ridiculous I believe them to be, will get a pass from me for at least trying to be consistent.)

You want to fight real animal cruelty? Buy your meat from local farmers with whom you can have a conversation and who will let you check out their operation for yourself. Don't buy meat from the supermarket because those animals were warehoused, treated like crates of cheap chinese-made happy meal toys, and fed all kinds of crap that animals weren't designed to eat.

If we are going to kill other life forms to sustain ourselves, let's at least make it as pure as possible.

Why?

Watch the Discovery Channel. Do the wild predators go for this "pure" kill? no, they go by any means necessary. As humans with the luxury of time, we can afford to be more...humane.

If we where truely humane, we'd switch to a purely vegan diet.

There's two different arguments here. The humane-ness of animal slaughtering practices in general can be debated. I personally don't have much patience for people who get prissy about it. But the real issue here is a group claiming that their religion gives them special status under the law. That's the part that I object to. There was a similar situation when I lived in South Florida in the '80s: the Santarians claimed they had a religious right to ignore zoning laws and operate slaughterhouses out of their homes. It created a huge health problem for some neighborhoods in Miami.

I R A Darth Aggie

You think you're not killing animals when you till the land and raise crops so you can eat your supposedly humane vegan diet? You think converting rain forests in order to grow soy and dumping fertilizers into the land and having it seep into rivers in order to grow corn and wheat is not wiping out entire ecosystems? As former hardcore vegan Lierre Keith explains in her book The Vegetarian Myth, the notion that a vegetarian/vegan diet is more humane is a bedtime story that vegans like to tell themselves in order to feel morally superior to whom they consider the less enlightened.

Morality and compassion aside,I heard that fear, adrenaline, etc. make for inferior meat when you're hunting deer. If that is true, then it makes sense that it would be the same for cattle and pigs.

BF is a bowhunter (as some of you may already know). He got a buck last weekend (weekend before?) with a clean shot from a bow, right through the lungs. Death was quick, clean, and the buck didn't suffer but a minute. I think the meat tastes better because the animal wasn't stressed before it was killed, like so many animals that are slaughtered in slaughterhouses. They hear the lamenting of their pals being done in, they stress over it, the meat tastes like crap because of the hormones released. Or so I've been told. But the bottom line is, humans are omnivores. We are made that way. We eat veggies AND meat because we need what both have to offer in the way of proteins and starches and whatever all else, in order to be healthy. Say what you will, I have always been and always will be a meat-eating, veggie-eating omnivore.

Oh and ice cream. Love ice cream.

o.O

What, Pricklypear? Reading my mind, again? BF has always maintained that a quick, clean kill is much better than letting the deer suffer for any lenghth of time. It bothers him when other hunters just wing a deer, and then try to hunt it down and finish it off. He says the deer panic and the meat doesn't taste as good as when the deer doesn't suffer. Once minute he's chasing a doe, the next, he's out. Didn't know what hit him.

I'm with Cousin Dave. Regardless of whether I agree with a law or not, I am completely against exemptions based on religion.

And I do get our meat from a local rancher who butchers his own meat, and I have toured the facilities. I'm well aware that it's a messy business but I also know that he and his company endeavor to make it as instant and efficient as possible. No need to prolong the agony, in the name of flying unicorns or otherwise.

Cousin Dave reads it backwards:
But the real issue here is a group claiming that their religion gives them special status under the law.

Well, no.
Kosher slaughter takes place in the same plants, same conditions as other slaughter, with minor differences.

How do you think non-Kosher beef are dispatched after they are stunned?

The PETA crowd has used its pity-mongering misinformation to criminalize what has, until now, been legal - and not very distinguishable from standard practice.

>>Kosher slaughter takes place in the same plants, same conditions as other slaughter, with minor differences.

Wouldn't you prefer to be stunned senseless before your throat was slashed, Ben David?

Or is that detail exactly what you mean by "minor"?

(I'm a meat eater.)

Ben David, the solution is to fix the law, not to go around granting point exemptions based on this and that.

> a flaming leftie like Johann Hari

There it is again! Hari's gay, and we know homosexuality is an enormous fascination for for BD... So of course, he smirks about it in the first sentence.

I agree with Flynne.

And those equating this to the harshness of life out on the Serengeti with Lions and such, - out there they are in their natural habitat and have their fight, flight, freeze responses fully functioning (something that may not function as well in a slaughterhouse scenario due to the stress and timing issues present) where their bodies will produce those numbing agents automatically. Not saying it is a picnic being a gazelle out their on the plains - but just as Flynne has pointed out, it is different.

I believe this is why they've implemented the electrical shock prior to slaughter - animals on a farm don't go through the same physiological numbing process as animals out in the wild.

And on the double standard note, I'm with Amy. Religions should not get a free pass on this one.

Ever been shocked? It's not pleasant. I don't see how that helps, except maybe keeping them still.

>>Ever been shocked? It's not pleasant.

No, I've never been shocked unconscious, momof4.
Have you?

"What, Pricklypear? Reading my mind, again?"

Yesss, I have these powers. Moohahaha, as the vampire cow said.

Anyway...on a special I saw aeons ago on PBS, cattle going into a slaughterhouse were being dropped immediately with some sort of gun. Bolts, maybe. They were nervous, no doubt from the smell of blood, but still it looked more like a kind of "Wait...what?" moment than flat out panic.

The rest of the program was very grisly, a tour of the whole process from pasture to market. Can't say it put me off meat, though.

I decided to roast a beef tenderloin for Thanksgiving tomorrow. Wrapped in bacon, no lie. I've been assured this is a marvelous way to die.

This is interesting...and yet, do we want the state to regulate this?

In California, you can no longer eat horses, as some people thought that was inhumane. We can eat cows, chickens, turtles, snakes, croc, but no horses.

"Ever been shocked? It's not pleasant. I don't see how that helps, except maybe keeping them still."

Personally, I think the most efficient and least cruel route (but might be more expensive) is a bullet in the head.

Let see, if I had a choice to be shocked into incoherency prior to having my throat slit and choking on my blood to being awake and completely coherent during this process....I probably would like to be shocked first.

I saw what happened to Nik Berg...and him being completely coherent during the process was the most frightening thing I have ever witnessed.

So M4, if either way, you would feel pain... would you at least prefer to be non-coherent?

I am against prosecuting people for supposed animal cruelty. As others have mentioned, nature is far more "cruel" at killing than what we do, whether you're doing it for religious reasons or for psychological issues.

I don't think killing our animals should be done "just because", but regardless of the reason, I definitely don't want to put someone in jail because he or she doesn't conform to someone else's sense of acceptable behavior towards animals.

>>I don't think killing our animals should be done "just because", but regardless of the reason, I definitely don't want to put someone in jail because he or she doesn't conform to someone else's sense of acceptable behavior towards animals.

Yeah, yeah Donkeyrock.

Except that children who behave cruelly towards animals in a manner deemed unacceptable by prevailing social norms may have VERY serious psychological problems.

(I've a friend who works as a shrink with the criminally insane in the UK.)

Plants are living creatures too. Don't be a murderer. Stop eating fruits and vegetables!

This has been proven by science to be false. The Farm Animal Welfare Council (FAWC) is the Government's senior panel of independent scientific experts on this area, and their investigation found that "the prevailing scientific consensus that slaughter without pre-stunning causes very significant pain and distress". The FAWC chairwoman, Dr Judy MacArthur Clark, explains: "To say [the animal] doesn't suffer is quite ridiculous."

Suddenly you believe just any statement by any old scientist, huh? Even scientists employed by the government! So trusting.

As for the issue at hand, I don't see why the feelings of the animal lovers should trump those of the religious.

Donkeyrock: I definitely don't want to put someone in jail because he or she doesn't conform to someone else's sense of acceptable behavior towards animals.

Jody: Yeah, yeah Donkeyrock. Except that children who behave cruelly towards animals in a manner deemed unacceptable by prevailing social norms may have VERY serious psychological problems.

So, Jody, you're arguing that people who behave cruelly toward animals should be put in jail because they have very serious psychological problems? How about people with very serious psychological problems who don't behave cruelly toward animals? Should they also be jailed?

If you don't numb an animal, it screams as you hack through its skin, muscle, trachea, oesophagus, carotid arteries, jugular veins and major nerve trunks, and then it remains conscious as it slowly drowns in its own blood - a process that can take up to six minutes.

As Ben David said, that's kinda ridiculous.

(Every source on Kosher slaughter I can find says it calls for a single slice across the throat with the sharpest possible knife; not "hacking" of any sort.

And indeed, the FAWC (pdf) report that we presume Hari was indirectly reference backs that up.

It also says that unconsciousness in cattle occurs, normally, in about 20-30 seconds. Thus, while the unconscious animal might be "drowning", in theory, it hardly matters since it's unconscious.

His source for the percentage of calves (and his specificity suggests that the "problem" does not occur elsewhere) that get a clot and die somewhat slower is unclear.

And irrelevant, because honestly? Who the hell cares?

Deliberate cruelty towards animals is bad - but primarily because of its effects on us, not poor Bambi.

The Possibylity That Some Calves Will Suffer If They're Not In Shock For A Minute Or Two Before We Cook And Eat Them?

Don't care, it turns out.

Especially don't care in response to Hari's precious blather.)

Meat killed by a murderous ideology that called itself a religion, is disgusting and unacceptable.

Meat killed by a murderous ideology that called itself a religion, is disgusting and unacceptable.

... which demonstrates that some "progressives" are brain-dead without being stunned... did you read ANY of the previous thread?

I confess to being kinda shocked by the "why bother being humane" thread here... after threads in which the non-religious readers strenuously defend their concept of "natural morality".

Yes, I realize it's not the same posters.

But the blase dismissal of basic responsibility for one's actions - or an understanding of how such actions influence self and society - Wow.

There is no point for religion or socalled religion to use their murderous ideology to justify their socalled humane killing.

It is immoral for those religious people to try to impose on us nonbelievers or deceive us nonbelievers with regard their socalled acceptable way of religious killing.

Why are certain religous people trying to deceive us or trying to justify their way of religious killing or trying to deny the cruel aspect of their religion or socalled religion?

Yes ron, we are "Better" than all other living things on this earth. They breed, they eat (sometimes each other) they die. They are not sentient intelligent life. And by the by, nature created us as the apex predators that we are in the first place, I see no need to feel the least bit of guilt over that, any more than a lion feels guilt over the fallen zebra. I'm not in favor of wanton torture of animals, but if I'm going to go all in on a cause, it is going to be one that helps people first, animals second.

Nature isn't pretty or pure when it comes to death, I'm with jay c on that one, a slit throat beats the manner of death by almost any other animal any day.

-------------------

Yes people are omnivores, generalists like bears, in that we can eat from more than a single source, we can eat fruits, vegetables, the like. But even a rudimentary examination shows where most of our nutrition has always come from, and it isn't growing in the ground. Though like Flynne said, yes, ice cream, we can always enjoy ice cream. Great, now I want to go buy some, ah well, its thanksgiving, screw it I'm indulging

-----------------

As for the issue at hand, I don't see why the feelings of the animal lovers should trump those of the religious.

Posted by: kishke

1. If its not a big deal then why is it illegal excet for religious exemtions?

2. How about you prove your religion is "the true" religion before you'all qualify for special treatment?

Still, we have to try to treat innocent animals in the most humane way possible and should not let the greed of any ideology impose on us, nonbelievers.

Actually Robert "nature" created us as unusually smart scavangers. And the lucky and smartest of our ancestors capatalized on that and set us off as the only known species to be able to effect its own evolution

I decided to roast a beef tenderloin for Thanksgiving tomorrow. Wrapped in bacon, no lie. I've been assured this is a marvelous way to die.

NICE!!! I'm going to do this for Christmas dinner with VENISON tenderloin! BF saved a HUGE one from his latest kill. Thanks for the idea, Pricklypear. What are you serving with that?? Taters? Tasty greens?? Tells us, Precioussss!

o.O

Happy Thanksgiving, Flynne!

I admit I got this off the Google, don'tchaknow.

The man included a recipe for crock-pot garlic mashed potatoes and honey rolls, which sounded so interesting I decided to go for it.

Also asparagus sauteed with mushrooms, water chestnuts and almonds, and whatever dessert a friend of ours is bringing. Husband hopes for the rum pecan pie.

Not particularly traditional this year, but I wanted to do some different stuff.

Gotta get busy. Bye! (I'm a late starter but the busy stuff is done.)

If its not a big deal then why is it illegal excet for religious exemtions?

Good question! It's a stupid law that caters to the feelings of animal lovers. I don't see why their wishes should trump mine. Do you?

I say let the government stay out of the whole business: what people may do to animals should not be legislated, except where it concerns damage done to another person's property.

Hadsil is right. What do vegans and vegetarians have against plant based life forms. Save the baby carrots!

Dont forget the insects Ken, trillions of insects are killed every year by indusrialized farming

trillions of insects are killed every year by indusrialized farming

As are so many, many cockroaches under the artisanal canvas sneakers of vegetarian hipsters in Brooklyn.